Steve Kerr says calling college games is 'like studying for a test'

NBA fans know Marv Albert and Steve Kerr well, as cornerstones of Turner Sports’ team of commentators. But every March, they pull double-duty calling games in the NCAA tournament as well as their pro duties. For Kerr and Albert, calling college games is a completely different beast.

“In the college game, if you get an assignment, you might be looking at 10 basketball players that are starting that you’ve never seen before,” Kerr told For The Win on Saturday. “In the NBA, you’re constantly doing teams and players that you’ve been watching for years. There’s a familiarity there for us, because we’ve been covering them for so long. With the college game, there’s a lot more research and preparation for us to do.”

Kerr and Albert have different priorities when it comes to researching new teams, given their different roles in the booth. “The preparation for the color commentary is very different than the play-by-play,” Albert says. “We all watch different things, but Steve is looking for tendencies, how often they play zone, things like that. That’s his area. For me, especially for college, is recognition of facial characteristics of players. In the NBA, I can see someone in a far corner, and even if I can’t see his face, I can tell from his body language who it is.”

Fittingly, given that the tournament is made up of college students, Kerr locks himself away like a kid cramming for an exam when he has a team to call that wasn’t on his radar.

“Once you get the assignment, you start downloading games,” he says. We have a website where you can download games from the entire season, and I start reading stories about the teams. Turner and CBS do a great job of providing us with information as soon as the assignments are out. It’s like studying for a test.

“What I try to do is watch each team once on Monday, and start preparing my charts. I have charts with each player’s name and number and statistics. Everybody sort of does it differently. And as I’m watching teams, each time I hear a little nugget or something interesting, I’ll write that down on my chart. And then as the week goes on, I’ll watch more games. I think by the time the tournament starts, I’ll have watched each team three times.”

Part of the magic of March Madness is inevitable Cinderella team that comes out of nowhere and goes further than anybody expected. For fans, it’s incredibly exciting. But for commentators, it can be daunting.

“North Carolina Central you would have to be a complete fanatic to have seen during the year,” says Albert. “So we definitely have some catching up to do. I read the clips and watch the games, to make sure I know what I’m talking about. There are people out there who watch these schools all the time, so the last thing you want is to get caught not knowing something.”

“I had never seen Florida Gulf Coast,” Kerr says, recalling the Cinderella of the 2013 tournament. “Fortunately for me, I didn’t get them until the second weekend. I didn’t have to call them the first weekend. So by the time I had to call them, the story was out. I had two tournament game films to watch.”

Even once they put in the work, the dynamic is different for the analysts between calling a college game and calling a pro game. The topics are different and so is the strategy.

“One of the differences is that when you’re not talking strategy with the college teams, you might be talking tradition, looking at the history of the school in the NCAA tournament,” Kerr says. “There’s a great deal of nostalgia there for us to cover. And then we get a lot of great individual stories. That’s what the sideline reporters are for, we get interviews with parents in the stands.

“It’s much different than the NBA game. It’s all about getting the right balance. You want to cover the games, get the strategy, but you want to capture their stories, too.”

NBA fans know Marv Albert and Steve Kerr well, as cornerstones of Turner Sports’ team of commentators. But every March, they pull (…)

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